Central reservation system (CRS)

A central reservation system or CRS is a piece of software that helps manage all of a hotel’s booking-related processes. It contains all the information about hotel inventory (rooms), their availability, and rates, shares this data across all distribution channels, and synchronizes incoming reservations in real time.

A CRS also connects with other modules in a hotel’s property management system, including front-desk operations, revenue management, payment processing, data collection and reporting, and so on.

Integration with a booking engine facilitates online reservation processing, while connection with a channel manager helps avoid overbooking or double-booking across distribution channels (modern CRSs often have these two modules pre-integrated for ease of use).

A hotel CRS comes as part of the PMS or a standalone solution. Some of the popular CRS providers are Pegasus, Windsurfer, TravelClick (by Amadeus), SynXis, and eZee.